1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gripper capable of gripping micro objects of various sizes and a driving method using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
According as electronic products trend to be miniaturized and light-weighted in recent years, semiconductor technologies come to be used in the development of micro structures, micro sensors, or actuators. Besides, increased interests on human body have led new researches into manipulating bio-cells. However, the fact is that there is no equipment capable of safely moving, fixing, or combining micro structures or micro substances such as bio-cells.
It should be therefore essential that researches for a micro gripper capable of moving a target with an exact preciseness be made to safely move, fix, or combine micro electronic products such as micro structures and actuators, or micro substances such as bio-cells.
Conventionally, there are two types of micro grippers: one uses electrostatic force and the other uses thermal expansion. In order to move arms, the gripper is formed with electrodes capable of generating electrostatic force directly on a target object, and in order to increase a driving force of the gripper for better operation, a high voltage is applied between the electrodes.
However, the gripper using the electrostatic force suffers from disadvantages in that difficulties in manufacturing processes may increase to push up the manufacturing cost as a result of obtainment of sufficient driving force generated by a narrow gap between the electrodes and supply of high voltage between the electrodes, and manipulation using the high voltage may damage living objects such as cells and microorganisms.
The gripper using the thermal expansion also suffers from disadvantages in that a sufficient time may be required for an increased temperature for generating hundreds of joules, leading to slowed operating speed, and micro structures such as cells and microorganisms susceptible to heat may be damaged due to a high heat transferred to the gripper.